148 



RUSSIAN SCHOOLS. 



instructing the natives, not as the Spanish 

 priests do, at Fort St. Francisco, in South 

 America, by taking them by force, and com 

 pell in g them to go through the forms and 

 ceremonies of their religion, but by mild per- 

 suasion and conviction ; and the report of their 

 success in general is, that a considerable num- 

 ber of savages of the Polar Regions have been 

 converted to Christianity.* 



May 23. — The Settlers have been very in- 

 dustrious in getting in their seed dorn ; but the 

 weather has been, and continues to be very 

 cold, with a strong north and north-easterly 

 wind, which has checked vegetation ; and the 

 woods around us still wear the dark hue of 

 winter. We now take a plentiful supply of 

 sturgeon, and with the return of the feathered 

 tribe we are much annoyed by myriads of black- 



* Since my return to England I have been favoured with 

 the following communication from a gentleman, who tra- 

 velled in Siberia, to promote the object of the British and 

 Foreign Bible Society, in the general circulation of the 

 Scriptures ; and which corroborates the above report. " The 

 Russians have made many proselytes to the Greek Church,, 

 (he observes,) from among the natives of the North- West 

 coast of North America, and two different supplies of 

 copies of the Scriptures in the Slavonian and modern Russ 

 languages have been forwarded to that quarter, for the use 

 of their settlements there, by the Russian Bible Society/' 



